Slashdot Mirror

Last I heard, aid from the Dutch was offered but not accepted yet, but nevertheless is on its way pre-emptively in the form of a marine frigate with fresh water supplies and equipment, marines, smaller boats, emergency rations, helicopters for medical evacuations, and such. The frigate is called "Hr.Ms. Van Amstel". Other material and expertise has also been offered, such as pumps, F-16s and identification teams, but is pending American request. (This roughly summarized and translated from the awfully crappy news site http://www.nu.nl/news/584318/22/Nederland_stuurt_f regat_naar_New_Orleans_%28video%29.html in Dutch.)

It's actually on the rise.

http://www.nu.nl/news.jsp?n=556966&c=50&rss

http://www.mirapoint.com/company/news_events/press /20050712.shtml

Believe it.... I've got 8 friends HARVESTING mp3 players. Extra sources and foratopis about it(ALL in dutch): http://www.fembusiness.nl/nieuwsbericht.asp?artnr= 945167&versie=1 http://www.nu.nl/news/515986/54/IT-bedrijven_in_ge weer_tegen_kopieerheffing_op_mp3-spelers.html http://forum.gamer.nl/archive/index.php/t-62780.ht ml\

...joke won't work unless you're gullible enough to do it.

If you can read Dutch, read all about it here.

Because obviously Germany is the home to all "total war" efforts, and the germans really appreciate being reminded of it again and again. Good call, Bill!

Hell, why didn't he call it the "endlosung for spam" while he was at it? And he could present his new DRM efforts under the title "DRM macht frei".

Maybe Microsoft is really a hotbed for nazism. For years I thought their Windows logo looks a bit like a swastika. As does the Developer Studio logo. As does the MSDN logo. All coincidences?

Coming back for a moment to the mentioning of nazis being rude when remembering Auschwitz - no, it is not. The nazis _must_ be remembered and named as the monsters they were, not hidden and ultimately forgotten.

Yesterday an article on nu.nl (Dutch)
Seems microsoft tries to pull of a deal.
Without public inscription
While the Dutch government unamiously dicided otherwise and to go for open source 2 years ago
The contract even violates european rules about public contracts.

http://www.nu.nl/news.jsp?n=454376&c=52

Seems holland is ruled by corp.inc

Dutch news-site (with a fairly large, non-techie audience) nu.nl was affected as well, a large warning was put up Saturday.
The warning (sorry, dutch only) mentioned that until Sunday afternoon, they received 1300 requests for help from possibly-affected visitors.

As far as accountability goes, it was nice to see the publisher, Ilse Media, put up a clear FAQ and even a special-purpose contact-form to accomodate for their not-web-savvy users.
They also mentioned further statements from Falk AG were forthcoming Monday 22nd.

Using an alternative browser, with AdBlock installed, I wasn't affected myself...

Do you have an article somewhere to point to? You have got me very curious now - if you're serious and not joking that is.

No, i'm not joking...

Dutch Article

Dutch news site NU.NL reports that the FIOD-ECD (Economic Crime Unit of the Dutch IRS) raided twenty locations on Wednesday, mostly campus locations in Groningen, Utrecht, etc in search of illegal software. This was done at the request of United States Customs Service (emphasis mine).

Dutch news sites often confuse one Federal service with another. Could this be related to the raids in Arizona and the "national crackdown"?

Funny thing is: same thing is happening in The Netherlands. According to the news-site nu.nl, the local tax enforcers are looking for 'perpetrators' in Utrecht, Enschede and some other cities. Arrests, allegedly, have been made. Now, is this really true, or are they pulling some big fat FUD-operation?

Yeah, I was reading a Dutch news article and there too they mention that Microsoft's appeal will mean that they won't have to pay right away, only when they lose the appeal. Seeing as the appeal can take several years (I'm translating from the article), it seems likely that MS won't have to adjust its business practices in the meantime and can further leverage its monopoly position to shove out competitors, which, as others have said, is tantamount to no punishment at all.

The courts really need a new way for technology lawsuits; so much can happen in a year's time, by the time the lawsuits are finally over, it doesn't matter any more....

If you are keen to read the Dutch court ruling or the Dutch News Channel, you can use World Lingo Translator.

All references to the meaning (and age) of a popular Queen song aside (old news, this one), I found it very interesting to wake up first thing this morning with the news that my city was on fire.

So I guess we need radio because we need some kind of useful signal to feed to our radio alarm clocks.

Just stumbled across an article in an on-line paper (sorry, Dutch only) that puts forward two really ridiculous arguments:

• Developpers would have to pay for using common words(?) and constructions in software for use in for example vacuum cleaners and laundry machines
  WAKE UP! A patent cannot keep you from using a word. This sounds more like a trademark isssue and trademark protection has been there for already a long time.
  Furthermore, there already are patents for constructions in vacuum cleaners and laundry machines, albeit not on the software that's being used. Everything on a vacuum cleaner and a laundry machine is patentable, just as long as it's new and it provides a solution to a technical problem (well, at least in the civilised world (Europe, China and Japan)) and that prevent other people from using such simple constructions as well. Example? One word: Dyson. And there are no software patents involved here.
  Please bear in mind that something obvious or known is not patentable and that procedures to prevent this kind of patents are in Europe far better than in US and a lot cheaper as well.
  When you use a simple 8051 microcontroller in you laundry machine now with a simple algorithm, extensive European software patent legislation cannot stop you using it.
• But what struck me most is the following argument by nobody less than Richard Stallman. He should have known better. Quote: (translated from Dutch) "Imagine the EU would have made it possible to patent combinations of tones; in that case, only seldom a music piece could be written".
  Well, you can already protect combintation of tones. Or to be more precise: combintations of tones are protected by definition, just like combintations of computer code. It's called copyright and lasts usually about 100 years instead on the mere 20 years of patent protection. Furthermore, this kind of protection is already being used as a tool for spreading free software under the GPL, of which the same Mr. Stallman is a well-known supporter.

Also keep in mind that the European Patent Office is not bound by decisions of the EU. It is independent. And has quite a good policy to keep the real business patents from being granted.
And software patents: I write applications for them every day. Well, in the broadest sense, as everything you build with transistors can be build with software. When you patent the method performed by the transistor - resistor - capacitor circuit, the software performing the same function is protected as well. Duh...

On last remark before you flame me to my toes:
Yes, I know the absence of patent protection is a good way to help a booming technology. Two major companies of The Netherlands were able to compete with companies from other countries in the early days of the 1900's because The Netherlands were lacking patent protection. So it might help here, but let's keep the discussion and arguments sane.

From a Dutch article*

A spokeswoman for Siemens said a GSM (cellphone) of the Siemens brand exploded last year in Germany. It concerned a phone that was placed in a carkit. During recharging, the phone had overheated and exploded. Nobody was injured in that incident. The user of the phone had bought the battery at a fleamarket.

* http://nu.nl/news.jsp?n=193292&c=51

From 2004 onwards in the Netherlands, you cannot get a prescription for Ritalin via you GP/family doctor anymore. You can only get a prescription via a medical specialist. They do this to prevent children with false-positive ADHD diagnose getting ADHD admitted because of teh unknown long term effects of Ritalin.

Dutch link: http://nu.nl/news.jsp?n=162962&c=10

While everyone is making fun of these spammers, it might be worth noticing that these nigerians, perhaps unlike the people behind the penis enlargers, are truely serious criminals.

Only this week in amsterdam 6 nigerians got prison sentences up to 4.5 years for fraud, laundring money, and swindle, all related to these email scams.

according to a dutch news site this hole was fixed shortly after the posting... So thats the way to talk to microsoft.....

nu.nl for people knowing how to read dutch (no NOT german)..

See this if you read Dutch for details.

Point of this story in relation to the slashdot post: A missed opportunity for the defense who didn't claim he was from the future....

There is a pic of Jupiter here

The site is dutch, just scroll down.

According to this article (in dutch), the fire was started by someone from the university. The 26 year old man has plead guity last sunday.

He had been caught on the friday before, lighting fire in another university building.

Dutch news site Nu.nl has an articlestating that Xenu's ISP is under fire now. Apparently, xtdnet's upstream provider, Priority Telecom has disconnected xtdnet over Xenu. Xtdnet has an article with more detail.

Xenu is still up, though.

Don?t beat up on Katz that much, he?s obviously living in a different dimension then the rest of us. I just find it funny that his article is posted at the same time that /. is running another story about the Bert Osama conection.

DPA and 2 news sites here in the Netherlands are reporting that the Black Box has been found of the Pittsburg crash. Can't find anything on CNN though.

Link (in Dutch) here

From the webpage:

During a conversation about Microsoft's break in, and how the stolen source code would affect things like wine, a friend mentioned that Yankees.com had also just been hacked (I found out later that he got that infomation from The Register, specifically here, which in turn found out from here).

It is clear from the text that the guy poked around after a reported had got the news, written a story about it, but it up on the web, it then propagated to a different news agency (the register) where his friend read it.

Yes I know that nothing travels faster than the speed of bad news, but this is not a question of minutes, much more like hours.

And the FBI *IS* waisting it's time because of incompitence.
--
Why pay for drugs when you can get Linux for free ?